How to Rewire Your Mind and Heal Stress from the Inside Out with Dr. Ellen Langer

31:32And they're just too tired after work. study was so simple as many of these are my studies we just taught them that their work is exercise so making a bed is like working on this machine at the gym sweeping and so now we have two groups one group that doesn't realize their work is exercise one group that now sees that their work is exercise we take many measures turns out they're not working any differently these two different views they're not eating any differently all that's changed is their mindset now work as exercise as a result of that change they lost weight there was a change in waist to hip ratio body mass index and their blood pressure king wow um you know so um i our thoughts matter let's go i'll go to the very present because there's so many things for us to talk about i did this uh study recently with my graduate student peter ungel and um it's a study on wound healing.

32:32This is interesting. In order to test the one's mind, the degree to which your mind affects healing, the physical body. We had to inflict a wound. I'm not sadistic. And even if I were, the Human Subjects Committee is not going to let me. So it's a minor wound. Sure. But it's a wound. A little paper cut or something like that. No, we used the Chinese cupping. Okay. So it creates it. Okay. And all we have are people in front of a clock. It's like a bruise almost. Exactly. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is going twice as fast as real time, half as fast as real time, or real time. The question we're asking is, does that bruise heal based on perceived time, which is the time the clock tells you, or real time?

33:24And it turns out it's perceived time. Come on. Yeah. And we're doing this now with people who've had hernia operations, cataract surgery. I want to do it with broken bones as well, where we tell people. Right now, the doctor will probably tell you, say, how long is it going to take for me to heal? Three to six months. And I think they use the outer limit. I want to tell people, some people have healed as quickly as, and give the quicking healing time and see what happens. Interesting. So if a doctor who is a credible expert is telling you this is going to take three to six months of recovery. You're not going to do anything until three or six months of recovery.

34:11You're just going to wait until that end time and then start feeling better. So you're saying what if a doctor said, you know, it's possible you could heal in two to four weeks. And start seeing incredible healing fast if you do these certain things. Do you think the body could connect to our thinking and our belief in that way? I think it's one. It's one. So it will necessarily be connected. So in the back of, after I talked about, in the book about all these mind-body unity studies, I give a treatment that we've come up with that essentially, you know, what I want to, let me backtrack a little bit.

34:50Most people know about placebos. Placebos may be our strongest medicine. Just think about it. You take a sugar pill. You take a nothing and then get better. So it's not the pill. You're doing it yourself. So my life's work has been to try to find out how to do this more directly. And what I'm just going to tell you is a procedure that seems to work and that could explain placebos and other things as well. But it's the answer to your question. Okay, so if you have three weeks to heal and now you're approaching the second week has passed, what are you doing? And this is what you might be doing. When people are given a diagnosis of a chronic disease, they tend to think that the symptoms are going to stay the same or get worse.

35:39Nothing moves in only one direction. There are all these little blips. It's sort of like the stock market. If it's going up, it doesn't go straight up. It goes up, goes down, a little up, okay? or down to bedding. And it's the same thing with any measure you're going to take over time. There are fluctuations. Now, what happens is there are times you're feeling better, but you're not paying any attention to those times, all right? Because your expectation is it's only going to get worse. What happens if you pay attention? So what we do, we start by calling people every day, twice a day, sometimes three times a day at various times.

36:18And we say, let's say you have chronic pain, for example. Nobody's stressed. It doesn't matter what it is. People in chronic pain think they're in pain all the time. People who are stressed think they're stressed. Nobody has anything all the time. So we call and say, how is it right now? Is it better or worse than before? And why? The why is the crucial question. All right. So what happens is Because now, during times, it's going to be better. So you're going to feel, gee, it's not as bad as I thought it was. There are moments of relief. Y initiates a mindful search. Why now is it better than before?

36:57And by doing this, the process now gives you some control over the disease. So control itself is important to your health. When you're in control, you're looking for ways to be better. To improve, yeah. Right. So we use the stress. So you're stressed all the time. I call you. Okay. Then all of a sudden you realize, you know, when you're talking to Ellen Langer, then you're maximally stressed. So then it's easy, right? Don't talk to me as a way of improving. All right. So three things happen when you do this attention to variability, which is just a fancy way of saying being mindful, noticing change.

37:34The first is that you see, hey, it's not that you're maximally awful all the time. Second, by asking why you're being mindful, that's good for your health. And third, that you're more likely to find a solution if you're looking for one. Now, we've done this with Parkinson's, stroke, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, chronic pain, a host of real disorders. And in each case, we get very positive results. And so, you know, now we're looking at how this might actually explain the placebo. And the way is that you take a pill, now you're expecting yourself to get better. So you're looking, am I better?

38:19Oh, now I'm not as better as I was before. Why? And the process unfolds naturally. Now, so when I was trying to arrange it so people could take care of themselves rather than rely on a doctor to give them a nothing so that they take care of themselves. It doesn't seem that way because we're calling them, but most people now have smartphones. It's very easy. You set your smartphone to ring in an hour. You ask yourself, how is it now? Better or worse than before? Set it now for two hours and 10 minutes. It just varies the time. And you will be better even if it doesn't completely go away, although we have very positive findings.

39:04This is powerful. And the thing about a placebo that's kind of interesting because the BBC did a version of a replication of the counterclockwise study. And I remember there was this actress who was one of the participants. And she got better and she couldn't understand it. And she said, you say it's placebo, But, you know, arguing because placebos are bad. Now, placebos to people are bad only because the people who started talking about them were pharmaceutical companies. And for a pharmaceutical, I want to bring this drug to market to make a fortune. And this damn thing, you know, this placebo is just as good.

39:45So then I can't bring it to market. But if you think about it, and then people say, it's only psychological. as if, wait a second, you know, physical is real, you know, psychological not. And now I'm saying they're both the same. So what influences the other? Do our thoughts influence our... It's all happening more or less simultaneously. Really? Yeah. So if we feel pain somewhere, we feel overwhelmed or stress, we feel sharpness of pain somewhere, is our thoughts influencing that pain or is the feeling of it influencing our thoughts? It's one thing. Interesting. You know, I raised my arm. That's affecting my wrist, my forearm.

40:28It's all happening essentially at the same time. You know, there was somebody, I can't believe that I couldn't find who did this study, where they did the biochemistry of a teardrop. And that a teardrop of sadness is biochemically different from a teardrop of happiness. Really? And remember the iridologist. an irontologist who was able to look in my eye and know there was something wrong with my golf lift. It's all the same. I go like this, my mind, my brain is different. We don't have the sophisticated machinery, technology to pick up the difference. But if I took a few cells of your skin and you were mindful versus mindless, the difference is there.

41:16Really? But we can't see that now holy cow no this is fascinating what i mean what would you see say then if people want to live pain-free if they want to live pain-free stress-free and they want to feel like they're aging gracefully all in one minute what what can they be what is the cocktail of ingredients that you should be doing on a daily basis to create that? Yeah, you should accept that everything is uncertain. And so then you can't know those things. You know, if you forget something, doesn't mean now you're becoming, getting dementia. You forgot something. And it's interesting because I'm a teacher, I'm a professor of these wonderful students at Harvard, and I give an exam and they get a lot of it wrong.

42:12They studied it, they just didn't remember. So young people are not infrequently forgetful. They just don't worry so much about being forgetful. If you fall, some people then take themselves out of the world because they're afraid of falling again. And I remember, I was consulting this nursing home many years ago, and this woman who was, I was in the director's office, and this woman who was about, I'd say she was about 85 or whatever, visiting her sister who was 90. And she was bragging. She said, you know, my sister wanted me to bring tongues to help her put on her underwear by herself. But I wasn't going to do it because she could fall.

43:03And we said, okay. And then I chimed in, which I probably shouldn't. And I said, you know, we can prevent her from falling. and burning herself or anything else that happens to people in the course of a lifetime, we can induce a semi-comatose state. And then she'll be perfectly accident-free and so on. So in some sense, I mean, it may seem silly, but some part of being human is the possibility of some of these things happening. Yeah. Yeah. And recognizing that you can get yourself through it in some of the ways we've already discussed. I'm not suggesting that we all just throw caution to the wind.

43:47But I think a life that provides no opportunity for any of these things to happen, it wouldn't be one that I would choose for myself. This is all fascinating because I think a lot of people want to live longer. and they want to live longer, healthier. They don't want to live in pain and on medications and stressed about it. They want to feel better. So let me tell you, what people want to do, it should be doing is making the moment matter and that whatever they're doing, they should enjoy doing it rather than doing it for some end, you know, so that I hate exercising, but I'm going to exercise so I live longer.

44:31No. And there are people who exercise and then end up having heart attacks because of the exercise. You can't... Because they're stressed about it. Yeah. What you want to do is if you do it, show up for it. If you show up for it, it'll be enjoyable. If it's enjoyable, you can't ask for more than that. So many people are trying to add more years to their lives. And I think that what we should be doing is adding more life to our years. Wow. And that will end up, I think, in the long run for most people, have us living longer. But whatever you're going to do, it should be fun. Now, how could it be fun?

45:12It depends on the way you do it. Doing it mindfully, actively noticing, it sounds so simple, but that's the essence of engagement. That's what you're doing when you're having fun. And it's no work. That's why I say it's very important to understand mindfulness as we study it. It has nothing to do with meditation. If you were to leave California and come back to the East Coast and come visit me at my house, you wouldn't have to practice being mindful. You'd walk into my house. You'd be curious. Oh, look, did she do that painting? This is a book she's reading. Whatever it is you saw, you would notice because you knew you didn't know and you'd be curious.

45:54and you know once you're noticing the neurons are firing and that's figuratively and literally enlivening so that's all you have to do now the problem is the world has taught us to divide work and play for instance and that work has to be bad so for students it can be play and study well you know work and life and again i object strenuously um that um bring play into your work exactly you know that um and people talk about work-life balance you know i have so many of these in the book where here is bad and then the experts help us to get here it's better but not as nearly as good as it could be so work-life balance is better than work-life imbalance But better still is work-life integration.

46:47Make it one thing. Don't be a different person at work. You know, that there should be a certain seriousness to even play and playfulness to our work. We have studies where we just have people notice things about whatever they're doing. And it ends up fun. we had people this is a study so what did we do? We gave people index cards that had on them jokes and their job was to evaluate how funny the joke was so for half of the people it was a job for half of the people it was just an activity and when it was a job their minds wandered they resented doing it even though the thing they were doing would seem to be almost inherently fun.

47:41Right. So, you know, I don't know that if you were doing brain surgery, any kind of surgery, at the moment you're doing it, you want to be lighthearted, but it should at the least be interesting. You know, the doctors make a lot of errors, no different from the rest of us, except medical errors are very costly and cost people their lives. And those all result, to go back to your original question how do we fix everything by making people more mindful when you're more mindful you see what's going on and you know that you were leaving that sponge inside the the person's body before you sewed them up wow um so no matter what you're doing if you're doing it mindfully you're going to be enjoying it and if you're enjoying it um that's going to be its own reward, which will probably lead to the longer life.

48:36I'm trying to think. Right, right. Sure, sure. That's great. I love this. I feel like a lot of what I've noticed in the world lately is that a lot of chronic illness is linked to people being obese. Obesity is up in this country and around the world. And you talked about the chambermaids study, but I'm curious, can people just think themselves thinner? Is it possible to lose weight by your thinking alone? Well, that's what seemed to be the case with the chambermaid study. But I think that, again, if you want to stop doing something that you're doing, the best way to do it is not to look at the result of what you've done, but to look at why you're doing it in the first place.

49:19Can you give me an example? Well, sure. You know, that I've gained 20 pounds, therefore I want to take off the 20 pounds. um why did you gain the 20 pounds you know were you eating because you are anxious well then you know we have to find a way of not being so anxious i think that um for many people who are trying to lose weight um they are not paying attention to why they gained it in the first place if you are mindful you would notice that you know you gain three pounds taking off three pounds is not very hard for most people if you don't notice until you go up two sizes um then you're not being mindful exactly it's going you're not paying attention to what you're consuming you're just eating throughout the day or you're not whatever you're not moving your body enough something right yeah um you're not paying attention you're you're not paying attention well it paying attention sounds big you're just noticing little things and then it becomes much more doable um But, and people have written now about mindful eating.

50:29In fact, the word is so out there that I think that it's important to me get lost with that, but I'm glad it's having an influence. Sure. In so many ways, yes, because you're gaining weight out of nervous eating, the more mindful you are, but the less stress. So let's say I came to you, we don't know how many people are going to be watching us. I could have said to myself this morning, oh my gosh, how is it going to go? So many people are going to see me and then just stuff my face. But I didn't bother doing that. It didn't make me the slightest bit anxious because I've done things. I'm not 12 years, 20 years old.

51:14It's not the beginning of my career. But I think that lots of the things we learn when we're older, the wisdom that comes with age, people should learn when they're young. You know, to realize, I wrote a paper, a little blog at one point about, you know, you're three years old, and you fall, and you scrape, and you cry bloody, then you're six years old. I don't know, are you in elementary school at six years old? Yeah, you're first grade. Okay, first grade, and Johnny or Janie doesn't send you a valentine, and, you know, the world's going to end. And then you get a little older, and now you've got some pimples, and oh my God, I'm never going to be attractive.

51:54And then you get your first job. And am I ever going? It just goes on and on until at some point you say, it was all so silly. And we can be taught the ways it's silly right from the beginning to realize there are many ways of doing everything. And by thinking that there's one right way, then that makes so many of us wrong. and there are things we put in place to keep us down. And I'm here to say, you want to do it differently, do it differently. We should all be doing it differently in a whole different way. When I lecture, sometimes I look in the audience and say, is there anybody here who's 6 '5"?

52:39Surprisingly, there almost always is. I ask them to come on the stage. I'm 5 '3". We look. We take a seat, right? I ask them to put his hand up. I put my hand next to it. His hand is three inches bigger than mine. And then I asked a simple question. Should we be doing anything the same way? Anything physical? It seems silly, right? And so it is with everything else, you know, that people, who are the people who decided these are the things we should know, these are the ways we should know it. You know, it gets to the point where imagine you're in school and you're asked the question, how much is one plus one and little johnny says one what's going to happen in today's schools teachers are saying no that's not exactly and the the child is going to be looked down on by all the other kids haha you know um and then grows up feeling uh less than um and sometimes less than is because you actually know more than rather than less interesting um it's interesting that when When we're putting people down, there's a way, and talk about three levels here.

53:50So let's imagine we have a little kid who's uninhibited. Okay. Now, then we have people like us, more you, your age, that are inhibited. What does inhibited mean? You know the rules. You're supposed to do this. You're not supposed to do that. And you comply. then hopefully hopefully you get to a certain point where you say who cares right now that behavior of the who cares the old person may resemble the young person and it's a mistake to think of that person as um uh behaving childishly so they're not um uninhibited the way the child is they're disinhibited interesting it's usually it's you see you know my grandfather before he passed he used to just say whatever was on his mind and it was inappropriate for a lot of people but for him he's just like I don't care you know just let's say what I want to say yeah yeah I'm but the point here the larger point that I'm making is that when you see somebody behaving in a way where you're taking them to task diminishing them it may actually be that they're more evolved than you are rather than less.

55:09So another example, you see somebody drop their cane and so the miserable person doesn't go over and help. Then the next level two person runs over and helps. But there's also a level three, better, where that person watches and sees because the person who dropped their cane is going to feel better if he or she can pick it up by themselves. And you don't want to deny them that. And so you don't give help that's not really needed. So level one and three are not the same. They're both not helping, but they're very different people. Interesting. One's just kind of like, whatever. The other one's saying, I don't want to rob them of the opportunity of empowering themselves.

55:55Right. And this goes through, there are so many things. I spend a lot of time with language that is interesting to me because I think here in the world that we live in today, most people are not enjoying the lives that they could be enjoying and they don't know what's available to them. So many years ago, I was asked to give a sermon in one of the Harvard churches. Okay, I say yes to everything. So I say yes, I'm not religious. And if I were to be religious, I'm Jewish. So what's an appropriate topic? Forgiveness. It sounds sort of religiously. It's not, but I could get away with it. So I start to think about forgiveness, and I come up with something that's almost sacrilegious.

56:42If you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad, what are they going to tell you? Good. That's good. If you ask 10 people, is blame good or bad, what are they going to tell you? Bad. It's bad. Gee, but you know, you have to blame before you can forgive. So our forgivers are our blamers. Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things? You blame people for bad, but things in and of themselves are neither good nor bad. So what do we have here? We have people who see the world negatively, who blame, then come to forgive. Hardly divine. So if you blame, it's better to forgive than not. However, you shouldn't be blaming them in the first place because their behavior made some sense or else they wouldn't have done it.

57:30So if you understand that their behavior was sensible, then there's no reason to blame them. Then there's no opportunity necessary for forgiveness. So we leave it at forgiveness rather than this whole better way of being. So we have trying. It's much better than giving up to try. So we're always teaching kids to try. Well, I did this study. Well, then I was informed that this should be called the Yoda study, which I didn't realize. And it is the Yoda study. Don't try. Just do it. Would you try to eat an ice cream cone? No, you do it. You just do it. So trying has built into it the possibility of failing.

58:14All right. So not doing it, trying, when you're thinking of failing, not nearly as good as just the doing. So I go through lots of ways where, in fact, there's a world that's so much better than the world most people experience. I went to visit a friend many years ago who had a very bad case of cancer. And I said, Eva, how are you? She said, they told me my cancer is in remission. At that moment, I thought, well, wait a second. If I had the very same test, they'd probably tell me I don't have cancer. why is it i don't have it but she has it in remission okay now if you think it's in remission you're still stressed hopefully it doesn't come back exactly if you're cured um you don't have that stress interesting yeah and so again remission is better than being active but not nearly as good as it being cured now when you have a cold um and the cold goes away you don't see yourself as in remission.

59:15See, it's gone. And then if you get a cold, it's a brand new cold. And it can be the same thing for cancer. In some way, the cancer is all cancer. There's something in relationship to each other or else you wouldn't call it by the same name. But each cancer, each moment is different. So how important is language in our lives? It's crucial because the way we use language, once we name something, we think we know it. Once we think we know it, we don't pay attention to it anymore while it's changing. It's interesting. My fiance, she's from Mexico, and I don't know the exact language on how they say certain things, but when they have, for example, when they have a cold, they don't say, I have a cold.

1:00:03They say something that's like, I'm experiencing a cold, or something like that. They don't own the sickness. They don't own the disease, the illness, the anxiety, the stress. It doesn't say I have stress. I'm experiencing it. Yeah. No, we do here with if you have some disease, you almost become the disease. You identify. And it's very hard. So I had a student, a wonderful young woman, who had MS. And I heard somebody comes over and asked her how she is and she was great. Rather than, oh my goodness, for every question the MS is with her. And then she explained to the person how her mind is working, her arm, and went through all the parts of her that are just fine.

1:00:49And that gave me a different idea that when you have a chronic illness, all the word chronic means is that the medical world doesn't yet know how to help you. It doesn't mean that there is no way to help yourself. And so I don't have data to support this, but it seems to me a thought experiment that if you built up the rest of your body, made yourself strong, I can't imagine that wouldn't help the healing. So I show a slide, I don't remember what I was talking about during COVID, but you imagine Olympic runners versus a couch potato. And let's assume both of them were exposed to COVID and both of them got COVID.

1:01:30It seems to me the Olympic athlete would probably have an easier time with it. And so you can build up the rest of your body. That feels good. You're in control. You're being mindful so that itself is helping whatever the disease is. And it may actually be enough to fully turn things around. So how we think and identify ourselves also is determined based on the life we're going to live as well, it sounds like. that the way we define ourselves will determine the life we're going to live. And that's also important because too often, people say they can't. Whatever it is, they can't. And you can never prove that you can't.

1:02:15There's no experiment that can prove that you can't. All an experiment can prove is that if you do this, this may happen. It doesn't tell you that there's no way for anything else to happen. And then if you think about all of the advances the culture makes, that the big ones are always things where everybody said it was impossible. It's impossible until somebody does it and then it becomes possible. Then people don't learn from it because they think they always knew it. And so they go on to the next thing that can't be. And that when you realize that it's the doing of it, the trying, that's the fun, not the end.

1:02:57And you organize yourself differently around an activity. I mean, let's just take two instances come to mind. I'm trying to think now. They're blocking new thoughts. So these are old thoughts. But you're a little kid, and you're in the elevator, and you're trying to press the button, and you can't reach it. And so your parent picks you up, and you get it. And then eventually, you're able to hit it. And at that point, it's no longer fun. I mean, when was the last time you got excited that you could hit the elevator button? Right, right, right. Okay? Or if you were playing golf and you got a hole in one each time you swung the club, there's no game there anymore.

1:03:37It's the not knowing that makes it exciting. The mastering, not having mastered. And so when you get something wrong, I think we should all be more like the computer programmers where when they get it wrong, they don't say they got it wrong. It's a bug. It's in the system. And I'm going to figure it out. You know, if you think of, I like crossword puzzles. So in doing a crossword puzzle, it's great fun for me, or words with friends or whatever word games. If I finish it, it wouldn't be fun for me to do it again. Because I know all the answers. So you have to recognize that not knowing is what makes it interesting.

1:04:19What makes it impossible for some of us under so many circumstances is somebody else standing over you, whether it's a teacher or a spouse, making you feel stupid for not being able to answer the question right away. Judging you, shaming you, making you wrong. We need to realize. My goal, I'll write my next book about this. Right now, the world is vertical. You have those of us on top comfortably, and we make it as if we really know how we stack up, right? As if the measures we're using are always reliable. And I want to take that vertical and make it horizontal with the realization that everybody has special skills.

1:05:06So let me tell you where this came from. We are having lots of furniture coming to be stored in our basement. I see the amount of furniture, I know the size of the basement, and I say to myself, there is no way, no way that all of that is going to fit. This man who does some work for us, who has no sense of himself, he is uneducated, everything negative in his mind, he takes the furniture fits it all in where it's all accessible and when i saw that the first thing that attacked it's not fair right you're this genius you have a genius i couldn't do it and he couldn't do it um and um i thought maybe some things would change during covid when you saw how important somebody who's delivering toilet paper you know is relevant to you know more important than the architect at that moment.

1:06:08But to recognize that everybody doesn't know something, everybody knows something else. Everybody can't do something, everyone can do something else. And to question when I talk about talent and things like that in the book here, who chose the criteria? You know, to say you're good, you're not as good and so on. You change the... When I said before about the six foot five guy and I doing things differently, he wrote the rules. Now, the more similar you are to him, the white tall male, the better you'll be at whatever you're doing. More important to understand the more different you are from the person who wrote the rules, the more important it is for you to find your own way of doing it.

1:07:01and everything we teach is this is the way. No, this isn't the way. This is the way for that person who determined the rules of the game. It's very important. I mean, you know, I use this example a lot also, and I'll stop saying that. I'm a tennis player, and, you know, I throw the ball up. I kill it. It doesn't go in. I throw it up, and then I have a wuss, very weak, second serve, because I'm playing doubles, and I don't want to get everybody angry. Okay. If I had created the game of tennis, you'd have three serves. The first one, I kill it. Second one, now I'm going to learn from that first one.

1:07:40I kill it again. More often, it's going to go in. And I still have my backup third serve. Interesting. Nobody would think that two serves somehow comes from the heavens. This is the way it has to be. So who decided? Now, it doesn't mean we have to change the rules for each of us. it does mean that when you don't do it as well as somebody else, you recognize it's only because of the way the rules were written. At my 5 '3", I'm going to break more dishes than you were. Right? Who decided that the cabinet should be all the way up there? Yeah. As opposed to down here. Exactly, yeah. You know, I mean, everything could be, you know, mechanically it's not very difficult to have the shelves change height.

1:08:25True, yeah. But we don't think about that because we hold everything still. And we think that everything that is had some good reason for it being that way. And the reason is just that a group of people made the decision for it to be that way. Then we freeze it, as I was saying with how do you stop on ice in a car? Everybody learns you gently pump the brakes. And they're doing that even though now. Until they innovate new technology. Right. And now it's actually counterproductive, dangerous. Wow. I mean, how many years have you been teaching? Forever. Teaching at Harvard now? 45. 45 years you've been teaching at Harvard.

1:09:05I started when I was 10. Exactly, yeah. 45 years of teaching at Harvard, you've seen a lot, you've experienced a lot, you've done a lot. if you could only if you could have parents watching today teach their kids only one skill set to live a better life appreciation of uncertainty and I guess well it would be recognizing that everything that is could be different everything that is was a decision so that people don't give up their own way because the rule says. Because that's skill set. It's all part of just being mindful. When you notice, if you're going to actively notice, you're going to see that things depend on context.

1:10:02You're going to see that, well, this person, you're right-handed, but I'm looking at you right now, assuming you were left-handed. and we had a culture in the past that tried to make you right-handed. Fine. There's an advantage to being left-handed. There's an advantage to being right-handed. We don't want to homogenize on every dimension. Right. I'm fascinated by this stuff. You have a chapter in your book, The Mindful Body, that is called A World of Plenty. and my audience really loves this idea of abundance creating more abundance in their life I'm curious how can we align our thoughts with abundance even when everything around us seems to be like we're lacking well first of all um we have to be more specific about what you think you're lacking.

1:10:59You know, that what, if it's anything material, it's in order to get people's approval. And why do you want people's approval? Because then you will have better sense of your own self. Well, we don't need any of that. You know, that you can make yourself, if we just go back to what I just said about realizing that everybody doesn't know something, but everybody knows something else. So what do you know? What can you do? And if you spend your moments doing those things so that you're happy, the problems all go away. I was on this, gave a lecture down in Australia many years ago. And unexpectedly, she called all the person in charge, all the speakers, so we're all sitting on stage.

1:11:49And then she asked each of them, what was their bucket list? okay so now she comes to me and i don't have a bucket list you don't have a bucket list i said no that if you make the moment matter you can't do more of that and so you know if you're happy and you're happy yes and you don't have to then wait for a vacation to be happy you know it's nice do certain things exactly exactly exactly our job whatever you're doing should be fun. And you know I tell my students, I'm sure that they think I'm very strange, you know, that if you're flossing your teeth make it a game. For me everything is virtually a game.

1:12:30There's this wonderful video out there and what you've seen it's called Piano Stairs. Yes, of the person climbing and falling. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. And these I think it was in some place in Scandinavia. Okay. That's where it started. They go to the subway and the subway stations seem to be the same all over the world. And they see everybody is taking the escalator, and there are stairs and escalators. So everybody's taking the escalators. Then they lay down a piano keys on the stairs. So as you go upstairs, it goes, okay, right. And in almost no time, everybody's now taking the stairs. And so what I tell my students, why wait for someone to put To put the piano keys down there, sing yourself as you go up the stairs.

1:13:18Everything can be made fun. But in this world, we've decided these things are work, and work is supposed to be stressful. These things are fun. As a result, when you're not working, you're not having fun, you're stressed, because why aren't you having fun? Yes. And I think it doesn't take much to change some of this. most of it just comes from realizing that it was put in place at one time to serve the needs of certain people and that if it doesn't serve it doesn't serve your needs change it change it um i love this one of the quotes you have in your book you say don't try to make the right decision yeah this is a hard one make the decision right this is so important that i don't know um it Reading it, I think, is easier than listening to me talk about it.

1:14:10But let me tell you. Okay, so the most stressful thing in the world for people are making decisions. Now, remember, I said stress is the major killer. Okay, so let's look at decision making. Okay, we go back and add up some of the things I've already said. The first is there's no such thing as good or bad. That's a frame you put on things. Things in and of themselves are neither good nor bad. So if you were making a decision and what you're going to do is a cost-benefit analysis, if every cost is a benefit and every benefit is a, you can't add them up. They're not going to tell you what to do.

1:14:46Not only that, but if you were going to do a cost-benefit analysis, there's nothing that tells you when to stop pulling in information. And each new piece of information could change the sense of a decision. Not only that, but I told you prediction is an illusion. Decision-making relies on being able to predict, right? You know, that if you have to decide you want a car or a boat, strange choice. I don't think anybody makes it. But let's just leave it that way, okay? So we have a car and a boat that costs about the same money, and you can't decide which one. That the decision you're making depends on your guess about how much you'll enjoy.

1:15:29Well, I enjoy the boat. I get seasick, so it's not appealing to me. But will I enjoy the boat as much as I have enjoyed it? You can't say things change. Okay, now help me get back to this, but I want people to understand when I say you can predict. So that when I was married at the time with the pancreas, pancreas. He was in the army, it was a Vietnam sort of thing, and I was able to go to the commissary. So this is like Costco, but Costco didn't exist. So I go and I buy as many stockings as they had, because these were expensive. Right now they were like half price. A week after I got home, pantyhose had come out.

1:16:17Now this is probably for a man I don't know. So the stockings were no longer useful. I'm skiing and I finally decide, okay, what I'm going to do is invest in ski boots that are comfortable, that are warm. I do that. And then I end up spending winters in Mexico. So I never go skiing again. You don't know. You can't predict. You really can't predict. you think you can, but you can't. Okay. If you can't predict, making decisions makes no sense. If the way you make a decision is to do a cost-benefit analysis, if the cost and benefits are only limited by the way you think about things, that's not going to get you anywhere.

1:17:03So the point is, rather than try to make the right decision, which you can never make. Let me, one more little piece. do you want A or B? Yeah. They're psychologically the same. Whenever you can't make a decision, it's because the alternatives are psychologically the same. Then you pull in information to make them different. So let's say you find out A is$100 and B is$1 ,000. There's no decision, right? It follows mechanically. You're going to take the$1 ,000. Yes. Okay? So you're never really doing these cost-benefit analyses. Sometimes you gather information so you can justify, well, here's why I did this thing that you think is stupid.

1:17:50So anyway, you have to read it to fully appreciate it. But the bottom line is rather than waste your time trying to make the right decision, make the decision right. And so I had students live for a week. I said, from now until you come back for class next week, do not make any decisions flip a coin use a rule you know the rule to be the first thing that occurs to you is the option you're going to choose but no decisions for the week they come back and they had a stress-free wonderful week and they and you accept the decision you made as the right exactly because you can't know now sometimes people regret the decisions that they make and that's mindless for many reasons but not the least of which can't change it again not only that is that that other thing that you regret having chosen this could have been worse right it could have no exactly exactly there's that whole story like the the fable of i'm like the farmer and the horse or something and the horse was a nail yeah and it's like goes and goes it's like okay the horse broke his leg or right but then it right the other yeah something that's like but that bad decision turned into a good decision exactly and that good and then something bad happens right and it's like it's like the um um my house burning yeah exactly it's like this horrible thing that but you don't have to wait you know you can create the good um of whatever happens yeah and you say there is no good or bad it's all interpretation yeah i agree with that i mean if you you know you break your right arm what will happen is that you'll be using your left arm more and that strengthens it and so for many people your left arm is not as strong as your right-handed.

1:19:35So at the end of all of it, you're in a better position. Yeah. And you just never know. I mean, I did break my right wrist playing football. And I remember being really sad for, I don't know, about a year and a half because I was no longer going to play football anymore. I was in a cast, had a surgery that took a bone from my hip that did a graft. I was in this position for six months. I was living on my sister's couch for a year and a half rent-free. That part's good. And yeah, I mean, but I didn't have a good, I wasn't enjoying my life because this identity I once had, being an athlete, playing professional football was no longer available to me.

1:20:09The thing I had worked so hard for so many years, so long, dream gone. Yeah. And I remember feeling very sad and I don't know if it's depressed, but just in a low state, low energy. Looking back, I'm so grateful that it happened. What if I didn't get injured and I would have broken my neck the next year? Or something worse would have happened. And it set me to a path of doing what I'm doing now, which is impacting lives in a different way. And it brings me so much joy. So it's just learning to interpret it not as a bad experience. And the same problem for people is they don't realize when they're in a transition.

1:20:50transitions are almost necessarily discomforting because you're not where you were and you're not yet where you're going to be yeah you're in the middle somewhere yeah and um to look forward to where they're going rather than look back because the looking back you know so let's say um you're assuming that if you had stayed in football you would have continued to enjoy it who does exactly You know, that if you're doing what you're doing now fully, everything you've done before has led you to it. Exactly. And you can't do more than that. I'm so excited about this, that you wrote this book, The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.

1:21:28I want everyone to get this copy. Make sure to share this with a friend. Get a copy for a friend as well. Yeah, I have a statement in the back that you can't read it twice. You have to buy another one. Exactly, yeah. Give it to a friend. I truly believe that our thoughts, the way we interpret ourselves, the world events is so powerful for us. And so everything you're talking about, it's all backed by research and science. And when people have these tools and they apply them, they're going to live happier, healthier, longer, better lives. And so I'm so grateful that you're putting this out there.

1:22:03I have a couple final questions for you, but I'm just so grateful you're here sharing this. This question is, a hypothetical scenario, so bear with me. It's a question I ask everyone towards the end called the three truths. So imagine in this hypothetical world, you get to live as long as you want to live, but it's eventually the last day on this earth for you. And you've written 13 books, and I'm assuming you're going to write 20 more, and you're going to do so many other things to share with the world. But imagine in this hypothetical last day scenario, no one has access to your books. This interview is gone.

1:22:39No one has access to anything you've ever shared for whatever reason. You have to take it all with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three lessons, three things you know to be true from all your life experience. And this is all we would have to have access to your information, your content. What would you say are those three truths for you? I can probably just repeat what I've said to you. One is to recognize that behavior makes sense or else people wouldn't do it. And that will improve our relationships and our relationships to ourselves. The second is that people have to appreciate, enjoy, exploit the power of uncertainty.

1:23:28And, I mean, just be mindful. But that follows. Each of these leads to the other. Of course. You know, I have an acronym that I use in teaching at the end of my classes. It's called GLADO. G-L-A-D-O. So it's my recipe for happy life. Be generous, loving, authentic, direct, and open. And each of these leads to the other, and all of them follow from being more mindful. I love that. Glado. Generous, loving, authentic, direct, and open. I want to acknowledge you, Ellen, for the contribution you continue to make on society, on humanity, and the world through your research, through teaching students at Harvard, and then taking that research, putting it into things that we can all understand apply in our lives.

1:24:27through taking the time to craft these social experiments that you do and giving us more inspiration and more hope. So I'm just grateful that you're changing the paradigm for a lot of our thinking and the things that we have thought are one way, you're shifting it to say, hey, there's another way. So I really acknowledge you for your contribution and the gifts that you bring to the world. I'm so glad that you're doing this. And again, the mindful body. the final question I have is what is your definition of greatness? Being awake. Being present, being there. And you know, it's funny because people say sort of stop and smell the roses or you should be present.

1:25:10And that's sweet, but it's an empty instruction because when you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there. And so the way to be there is to notice new things about the things you think you know, you see you didn't know them, your attention naturally goes there, or top down to start off recognizing that you don't know, nobody knows, you can't know, and that not knowing is exciting rather than scary. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links.

1:25:47And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

1:26:25And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.